BPA Featured Article

The always-connected and, thus, empowered consumer has elevated customer service expectations. That’s why call centers are becoming contact centers, multichannel is becoming omnichannel, customer service technology is moving to the cloud, and enterprise collaboration and unified communications are enveloping all of the above.

Of course, it will take some time before all businesses have omnichannel contact centers in place. And it may be a while until they implement communications and collaboration solutions that span contact centers and every other department within their businesses.

But things are advancing nonetheless. And look at some early implementations in these realms demonstrate what’s possible.

For example, a company called Dorel Juvenile recently implemented  

Sharpen’s (News - Alert) omnichannel platform.

The children’s car seat manufacturer had a  consumer care team that operated in silos. That meant agents couldn’t seamlessly switch between channels during interactions. So if a consumer’s problem couldn’t be solved on the initial channel, the customer had to start all over again. And valuable customer and call center personnel time was wasted.

Now, however, the Sharpen platform enables Dorel Juvenile agents to interact with consumers use SMS, web-chat, email, and/or the phone. It tracks and displays for agents consumer history. That way agents can see previous conversations and pick up where they left off.

Murph Krajewski (News - Alert), vice president of marketing with Sharpen Technologies, says Dorel Juvenile has experienced a 32 percent gain in ROI and saved more than 20 percent in overall contact center costs as a result. And agents average inquiry handle time improved 60 percent and it was able to resolve 30 percent more calls with the same staff resources.

Keeping costs reasonable and customer service nice and speedy is really important in this day and age.

Tom Bullotta, managing director for the customer service solution offerings at cloud consultancy Acumen Solutions says: “By 2020, customer service will be the only key differentiator. Organizations that assess their service channels will have the opportunity to make dramatic changes in how they keep customers happy and loyal. It’s time to take the blindfold off, step into your customer’s shoes, and truly assess your service channels.”